All of the sources I have at my disposal agree that John and Yoko had been at the studio... some say John was working on transfering some of the album cuts from DOUBLE FANTASY to singles, while others maintain he was re-mixing Yoko's "Walking On Thin Ice" single.
#1. MANY YEARS FROM NOW (Barry Miles) - "Early on 9 December 1980, while Linda was taking the kids to school, Paul received a telephone call from Steven Shrimpton at his office telling him that John had been murdered. At 10.50 p.m. New York time, a mentally deranged fan had shot and killed John outside the Dakota as he returned home from a recording session at the Record Plant." (pg. 593)

#2. JOHN LENNON: DEATH OF A DREAM (George Carpozi, Jr., copyright 1980) - "All at once it was 5 p.m. and out of the Dakota's entrance came the man that Mark David Chapman had flown 6000 miles to encounter...Lennon was accompanied by his wife. They were on their way to the Record Plant studio on West 44th Street to supervise the transfer of some of (DOUBLE FANTASY'S) songs into singles records." (pg. 30)
"But death was his last expectation during the better part of four hours that he and Yoko spent at the Record Plant picking tunes from the album for singles sales... At about 10:15 p.m., John turned to his producer, Jack Douglas, and said: 'Hey, okay we call it a night? I'm bushed. We'll be back in the morning. Yoko and I want to stop and have a bite to eat...' John and his wife then left the studio." (pg. 35)

#3. LENNON: UP CLOSE & PERSONAL (ed., Timothy Green Beckley, copyright 1980) - "The Lennons had spent several hours at the Record Plant, a studio on West 44th Street... David Geffen, their record producer and friend, told the Lennons that more than 700,000 copies of their album DOUBLE FANTASY had already been sold... He (John) then got down to the business of transfering some of the album's numbers to singles. At 10:50 p.m. that evening, December 8, 1980, they stepped out of their limosine in front of the Dakota..." (pg. 6)

#4. JOHN LENNON AND THE BEATLES FOREVER (ed., Ed Naha, copyright 1978, re-released 1980) - "Monday, December eighth...John had agreed to a radio interview for RKO General Radio and at 5 o'clock he was scheduled to leave the Dakota to work at the Record Plant studio on West 44th Street to supervise the transfer of some of the numbers from his album, DOUBLE FANTASY, to singles." (pg. 8)

#5. THE COMPLETE IDIOT'S GUIDE TO THE BEATLES (Richard Buskin, copyright 1998) - "At around 11:00 the night of December 8, John was shot five times at close range by a deranged "fan" named Mark David Chapman, who had been waiting in the shadows of the Dakota entrance as the Lennons returned from a recording session at the Hit Factory." (pg. 269)

#6. THE LIVES OF JOHN LENNON (Albert Goldman, copyright 1980) - "At 1:00 p.m. John gave his last interview... He was still in full cry at 5:00 p.m., when he recognized that it was time to leave for the Record Plant." (pg. 824)

#7. T.U.B.L.A. http://user.tninet.se/~dwe825h/soginfo.htm
CD BONUS TRACKS
WALKING ON THIN ICE (6:55) (Single version)
By Yoko Ono
Recorded at the Hit Factory, mixed at The Record Plant, N.Y.C. , November-December 1980
Produced by John Lennon, Yoko Ono and Jack Douglas

#8. http://empirezine.com/spotlight/lenn...wyorktimes.htm
As taken from the New York Times
"On December 8, 1980 at around 5 p.m., John and Yoko left their apartment in the historic Dakota on Central Park West in New York City to go to their recording studio to supervise the transfer of some of the "Double Fantasy" album numbers to singles. David Geffen, their record producer and friend, said that more than 700,000 copies of the album had already been sold up to that time... The Lennons spent several hours at the studio on West 44th Street, returning to the Dakota at about 10:50 p.m. They exited their limousine on the 72nd Street curb even though a car could have driven through the entrance and into the courtyard."

NEW YORK - Former Beatle John Lennon, who with the long-haired British rock group was catapulted to stardom in the 1960s, was shot to death late Monday outside his luxury apartment building on Manhattan's upper west side, police said....Jack Douglas, Lennon's producer, said he and the Lennons had been at a studio called the Record Plant in mid-town earlier in the evening and Lennon left at 10:30 p.m. Lennon said he was going to get a bite to eat and go home, Douglas said.

Of 9 references, in only one can I find that John and Yoko were supposed to have been at the Hit Parade on the evening of Dec. 8th. The other 8 each one insist they were at Record Plant, or at the location of W.44th Street, or both. Two of these references are the NEW YORK TIMES and the DETROIT FREE PRESS, both extremely contemporary editions.

I'm not saying either is absolutely correct, but the overwhelming tilt seems to be in favour of the Record Plant.

Well, in a few books I've read they've said Hit Factory and in the E! True Hollywood Story: The Last Days of John Lennon, the mention the Hit Factory. I've never heard about the Record Plant, or whatever it is. Who knows which is correct. Maybe neither. It could be something entirely different!

Kurt Cobain?? another beatle freak? a beatle groupie? is/was he a member of the forum? did he work at the Hit Factory? the Record Plant? friend of **** ***** Cha****'s? did he write a book on the Beatles?

C'mon, you guys, this is BEATLELINKS.NET, you know, as in Beatles! What in the world does any current/ex member of Nirvana have to do with the Beatles?!?!?!?

lol sleepy, i dunno. Maybe since the topic was about whether or not the last recording session took place at Hit Factory or Record PLant before John died, she thought to ask about Kurt Cobains death...? Maybe we need a random questions forum, so that certain non Beatles questions can be answered.